Conventionally, wine racks are used in wine cellars or other wine storage areas to store numerous bottles of wine in a desired area. In one example of a conventional wine rack 30 shown in FIG. 1, the bottles of wine are supported along the length of the bottle within a grid of generally rectangular cavities 32 stacked upon and next to each other, each rectangular cavity typically formed by pairs of parallel wood supports 34, 36 held in position by front and rear frame structures. In this example of a conventional wine rack, the wine rack is typically configured such that user places a bottle 38 of wine lengthwise within one of the rectangular cavities such that when the rack is full of wine bottles, only the top ends 40 (i.e., where the foil is wrapped around the top end) of the wine bottles 38 are generally visible when viewing the wine rack—and the labels on the wine bottle are not generally visible by the user. As such, in order to determine which type of wine (e.g., varietal/grape type, winery name, vintage/year, etc.) is stored in a particular cavity 32 of such a wine rack, the user may need to remove the bottle from the wine rack in order to view the label on the bottle.
As recognized by the present inventor, what is needed is a wine rack that provides storage for numerous wine bottles while permitting the user to view the label of the bottle of wine as the wine bottle rests in the wine rack.
It is against this background that various embodiments of the present invention were developed.